


Hope

by lilyconrad



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-30 17:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8542204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilyconrad/pseuds/lilyconrad
Summary: The Clone Wars are the backdrop to a quiet and fragile love between a general and a clone commander.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Perspicacia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perspicacia/gifts).



CC-2224’s world is precise, made of numbers and formations and attack vectors. It has been that way since his birth and carefully controlled upbringing, he and his brothers growing taller and stronger like so many little seedlings in a greenhouse constantly battered by the storms and seas of their home planet.

He is taught weapons and war in the way other children learn sacred texts.

A DC-15A blaster rifle: 9.5 pounds, up to 50 shots per charge pack.

ARC stands for Advanced Recon Commando.

A man can last three days without water, three weeks without food.

A battalion, like the 212th he will lead, is four companies, 165 clones each.

Hundreds, thousands of other facts are neatly filed away in his brain, one designed by scientists with the same penchant for precision they gave him. He loves the numbers, the soothing repetition of facts, cold and clear and beautiful in their simplicity.

When CC-2224 leaves the precise grids of the Kamino practice grounds for real battle, he excels as he was created to do. But CC-2224, now Cody, resents the real world, its chaos and cruel fate and dumb luck that mock everything he was taught. A brother is shot in the head by a sniper that should have been out of range while Cody is talking to him. A squad is lost to friendly fire, a glitch in the air support navi sending bombardments just a few degrees away from where they should have been.

World after world, from dusty deserts to overgrown jungles, nothing makes sense like the pure, white homeworld he comes to miss.

As the war drags on Cody begins to lose hope in that fever dream that was an orderly world, a world with meaning and purpose. Or he does until he sees the General in battle.

Not Skywalker, even though he fights in this same engagement today.

Kenobi.

Cody has served under General Kenobi for some time now, pleasantly and distantly as duty calls for, never really seeing beyond the Jedi robes and Jedi reputation, Kenobi a placeholder for Shaak Ti, who was a placeholder for the scientists.

Authority figures. The ones who give commands.

But today is different. Today is the first day Cody has a chance to watch Kenobi fight without the distraction of fighting himself.

Not by choice, though. Cody’s been hit and is lying in the dirt, slumped up against a rock in a canyon marbled the color of sunset by the granite of this land.

His blaster arm isn’t working and there is a distinct grey haze creeping in around his vision, but he has a lovely view sighting across the canyon floor.

Cody definitely has a concussion and might be bleeding out. He’s not sure and can’t find any fear in himself if he is, all of his emotions fuzzy and distant. All he knows is that Kenobi’s lightsaber is flashing, drawing his eye, and then he really sees him.

Kenobi fights beautifully. Precisely. Every move is efficient, nothing gone to waste, and droids collapse before him in waterfalls of seared metal. It’s like coming home again, the halls of Kamino and promises of order and meaning made flesh as Kenobi whirls and feints and slashes with brutal perfection.

_This way? Is he coming this way?_

In the mist swirling through Cody’s vision, one that mingles with the puffs of blaster and bomb hits along the canyon all around him, Cody dimly realizes that Kenobi is fighting his way toward him. And there are brothers behind him, shouting and shooting, hurrying forward for cover as they try to reach him.

 _I’m not worth it, sir. Leave me here_ , Cody tries to say, but his mouth isn’t working. Dazed, he thinks how beautiful Kenobi’s saber is dancing through the dust and blaster fire, blue glowing through clouds of orange and red.

The last thing he sees before darkness claims him for a day and bacta swallows him for a month is Kenobi’s face, tilted down to his and flush from battle. “Cody,” he’s saying, those impassive grey-blue eyes on Cody’s and gilded azure from the line of his blade, “Stay with us.”

_Yes, sir. I’ll try, sir._

 

* * *

 

Three months later, the two of them are standing in the ruins of what was once a museum as the troops set up camp. A cool breeze rustles Kenobi’s robes and slips in under Cody’s collar, a pleasant contrast to the afternoon sun shining overhead.

Cody has healed up quickly, as his makers ensured, and is next to his general once again. He finds himself watching Kenobi now, whenever he can, the same way other brothers watch the way dice land or the way their ration wrapper tears before a battle.

Kenobi is a charm now, a talisman against the ruthless chaos of the world that claws at Cody’s heart. Kenobi is order and reason and the cold, perfect beauty of a will made real, and every time Cody watches him he feels strangely reassured that there is purpose and meaning in his life and the life of his brothers.

Now Cody glances over at him, at the fine line of Kenobi’s profile that stands out against the dark, burned rubble all around them as he looks up into the bombed-out museum and clasps his hands behind his back.

“What do you see, sir? Should we post a sentry up there?” Cody asks, turning to follow Kenobi’s gaze up into the shadows of the building.

Kenobi smiles and glances over at him, shaking his head. “No, no, Cody. I was just looking at the painting.”

Cody blinks and focuses again on the same spot, taking a moment to look past the possible hiding places for droids. He takes a second to visually assess the structural integrity of the remains of the second floor and decides it could possibly hold at least two large-caliber guns if, in a worst case scenario, this place became a last stand.

That matter settled, he returns to searching for what Kenobi was talking about.

It takes him a moment, but he sees it.

A large canvas still hanging intact despite the bombings that opened up the building around it. The size of a gunship door, Cody thinks. It’s a portrait of a woman, blue-skinned like the locals, dressed in robes of white with a halo of gold that might be woven stretching all around her head. The painting glitters and flaps in the afternoon sunlight.

“Do you think someone might be hiding behind it, sir? I can have Helo put a few holes in it to check.”

Kenobi chuckles, and Cody realizes there is no mocking in the sound, like there often is when he and Skywalker bicker in the same way Cody and his brothers bicker. “No, no, Cody. I’m just looking at it. Admiring it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do you think of it?”

“It’s a painting, sir. Edges look burnt.”

“True. But do you have any thoughts about it? Any feelings?” Kenobi stares up at it, eyes distant for a moment.

Cody tries to find something of note about it, but all he sees is a piece of canvas flying in the breeze. It’s not even a battle banner that would indicate a force size. “No, sir. Do you?”

Kenobi thinks about it. “Someone painted that. Someone took all of that time to make that. And it’s still there.”

“All respect, sir, it’s about the only thing left in this area.”

“Exactly. It’s still there.” He smiles gently at Cody. “It gives me hope looking at it. Someone planned this building, and it was lost. Someone brought in all of this marble, and it’s broken and scattered. But the person who painted this, their work survived. And here it flies today, to give hope that we will be like it, that out of all of the blood and misery of this war we will survive and come out the other side.”

Cody’s gaze drifts up to the painting as Obi-Wan talks, and he hears his same longing for rationality, for sense, in the general’s voice. “I’d like that, sir.”

They watch the canvas sway in the breeze.

“What will you do after the war, Cody?” Kenobi asks, the question surprising him.

“I… I don’t know, sir. What will you do?”

Kenobi thinks about it, tilting his head and the sun glinting red in the highlights of his hair. “I’d like to be a scholar. Live a nice, quiet life reading books in the Temple library and writing about them.” He nods, imagining it. “You?”

“Me? I… ah…” Cody has never really considered this. He’s assumed that one day, if not through a sniper or a karked-up air assault, death will reach out and find him in some other way, collecting him like it has so many of his brothers with a simple blaster shot or cannon fire. “I’ve never thought about it.”

“You should,” Kenobi says in a friendly way, not as a superior ordering an inferior but as one man speaking to another. “As the Akitans say, ‘Thoughts of tomorrow are the lifeblood of today.’”

And Cody does.

That night, as everyone sleeps, Cody scales a column up to the second floor of the wreckage of the museum, finding handholds in the jagged cracks that run through it, and cuts off the only unburnt corner of the painting with a simple knife he keeps in his boot. He crouches there in the dark, under the soft gaze of the painted woman, and tucks the bit of fabric away into his armor, not even sure until dawn the next day what colors are on it.

Late at night when he can’t sleep, he takes it out when he’s in his roll or his bunk and turns the rough fabric over and over in his hands, thinking of what Kenobi said as they stood there together looking up at the painting, and tries to picture himself doing anything but this. Some nights are silent, only the blue-white glow of hyperspace sliding past outside the portholes of a ship, and some nights have heartbeats of mortar shells booming in the distance as he and his brothers huddle in bunkers.

Cody can’t decide on a post-war occupation, but he finally settles on a house once the scrap of painting has two permanent creases across it where he folds it neatly in half and then in half again each night to put it away. A small house or cottage with a real refresher and maybe a garden like the ones they camped in three sieges ago, or was it four? Real floors, no more dirt and grass.

That’s all he can really imagine.

Once he gets the vague shape of a house in his mind, he tries to put it down somewhere, to give it a backdrop. On a beach? In a forest? By a river? None of them feel right, and if he’s honest, the house doesn’t feel completely right either. But it’s the best he can do.

As the months pass, his thoughts slide more and more often to Kenobi, having no trouble filling in details there. The crinkles around his eyes when he laughs or smiles, a rare but not impossible occurrence. The way he smooths his collars without realizing it when he’s worried about something, long fingers tracing over the edges of fabric as he speaks. The auburn of his hair that catches light and traps it in a fine scattering of gold under the ship lights.

Cody struggles with these new thoughts, not quite sure what to call them because they serve no purpose: they have no objective reason to exist, and yet they bring him pleasure in a small, secret way he can’t really explain. He hoards them, turning them over in his mind just as he does the little scrap of painting with his hands.

 

* * *

 

It is the night following one of the bloodiest battles he and Kenobi have seen so far in this endless grind of a war, another battle in another campaign that stretches on so long days blur together.

Tonight a thousand brothers march unseen into the skies, their spirits returning to the seas and storms of Kamino, and Kenobi sits alone in the darkness of the grounded gunship that is their secondary command post, defeated, head down and in his hands.

Cody has come to check on him, to see if any of his wounds are serious enough to warrant attention from the medics, and he quietly crosses the room to Kenobi, not turning on any lights so as not to attract bombers or scouts no doubt crossing the skies overhead.

“What happened?” Kenobi whispers, the educated lilt of his voice rough with emotion. “How did we lose so many?”

“It happens, sir,” Cody says gently, surprised at the force of Kenobi’s sorrow. “It’s what we’re here for.”

“No. No it isn’t.” Kenobi looks up at him, blue eyes indigo in the night, before dropping his head back into his hands. He falls into a grim, dejected silence, staring at the ground and his shoulders slumped low.

After a few minutes, unnerved by Kenobi’s despair, Cody instinctively reaches out and touches the back of Kenobi’s neck. He slips his fingers under the back of Kenobi’s collars to rest his hand there, his palm solid and warm against the general’s skin. It’s something the brothers do for each other, something that calms them all, the sensation an unconscious echo of the headrests of the liquid cradles that held them as infants.

Kenobi freezes, and Cody wonders if he’s overstepped his bounds, if that friendly voice Kenobi uses with him is courtesy rather than comradery, but then Kenobi lets out a long, trembling sigh and leans back into his hand.

Cody feels the world slow, the anguish and agony of the day falling away until there is only the sensation of Kenobi’s neck against his hand, warm and strong. It’s the first time he’s touched Kenobi other than to shove him down during an attack or pull him to safety, and he marvels at how it feels: the smooth skin, the soft strands of hair resting along the top of his hand, the weight of his head shifting back into his fingers as Kenobi raises his head to stare out into the darkness.

“You are worth more than this, Cody,” he murmurs. “All of the clones are.”

Unsure of what to say, caught between surprise and disbelief, Cody answers, “Thank you, sir.”

“Obi-Wan.”

“Sir?” Cody knows he should pull his hand back, that the general is not a brother and it’s not right for him to be so familiar with him, to touch him, but he doesn’t want to take it away. If watching Kenobi is pleasant, touching him is entrancing.

“You can call me Obi-Wan, Cody, when we’re not on the field,” he says, reaching up and putting his hand over Cody’s, squeezing his in silent thanks.

“Oh.” Cody isn’t sure if the word is for what Obi-Wan said or what Obi-Wan has done, stunned by both. He looks down at Obi-Wan’s hand, a cool porcelain color in the starlight but hot and firm to the touch, and tries to decide exactly how he feels about this as Obi-Wan lowers his hand back to his lap and that heat steals away.

They remain motionless, Obi-Wan sitting with Cody standing next to him, Cody’s hand solid and comforting on his neck and both looking out over the starlit fields. The acrid scent of smoke lingers on the night breezes that blow into the ship.

“And what is a man/but a leaf in autumn/one lost forever/one lost and forgotten,” Obi-Wan murmurs, adding an explanation when he remembers Cody likely won’t know what he means. “It’s a poem from ‘The Scroll of the Third Consort’. Classical Telladorian poetry.”

The image pulls at Cody’s mind, sad and beautiful, and he has a sudden vision of the forests of Takodana in the fall, fire-red leaves slowly drifting to the forest floor all around him during one of his first missions. “I can see it, si- Obi-Wan.” And he can. He sees his brothers as the leaves, all of them falling, none of them destined to remain on the branch through the winter.

It’s powerful and haunting and he wants more. “Could you… continue?”

“More poems?” Obi-Wan asks, tilting his head to look up at him, and Cody finally, reluctantly lets his hand fall away.

“Yes. If you want, I mean, it’s getting late and…”

Obi-Wan gives the smallest smile, the faintest twitch of shadow in the dark. “Which kind would you like to hear? There are the laments, the spring songs, the hero’s tales…”

“Something for the ones we lost today.”

Obi-Wan nods, sitting up straight and thinking. After a moment his voice slips through the darkness, strong and warm as it tells of brave men and brave deaths, of soldiers carried to the heavens on the tears of lovers and enemies alike as they leave the armor of their earthly forms behind.

He keeps talking and Cody keeps listening, each beautiful phrase and heartbreaking scene as clear as insignia, as bright as a shinie’s new armor in his mind. Surviving, finding connections between terrain and weaponry: practical things like this were drilled into him early as a high-ranking clone trooper.

But this is new, more intoxicating than spice, this lovely song of words and emotions delivered in Obi-Wan’s low, melodious voice.

When the general has trailed off into silence, his own soul soothed and comforted, a new warmth hangs in the air between them, the first blossoms of friendship pushing their way out from the ash and rock of the despair, the hopeless situation they have both lived for two years now.

“If you like poems, Cody, I have several books you could borrow. Datapads, I mean. All of my actual books are back on Coruscant.”

“You… wouldn’t mind?”

He chuckles and waves his hand. “Not at all. It’s not like Anakin’s borrowing them.”

“General Skywalker not a fan of the classics?”

“Only when he’s trying to impress a certain Senator.”

It’s Cody’s turn to chuckle and Obi-Wan smiles, glad to see they’ve both assessed that particular situation and come to the same conclusion.

And so begins Cody’s education in something other than war.

 

* * *

 

Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi enjoys diplomacy and battle in equal measure, though the famed Negotiator would never admit this to anyone. He loves them both for the same simple reason: they allow him to focus on something other than himself.

In the middle of a heated argument between chieftains or the searing rain of blaster bolts there is no time to think about the things that bring him pain, no time to remember the tremble of his dying Master’s lips or the darkness he is beginning to fear may have taken root in his former Padawan.

And when there are no locals to meet and woo in the name of the Republic and no droids to meet and disassemble for the same, there are always books. Philosophy, novels, poetry, history: an endless ocean for Obi-Wan to drown thoughts of himself in.

He has made such an art form of self-avoidance he doesn’t understand the thoughtful way Cody begins to look at him or why certain lines of poetry or beautiful scenes in books are always bookmarked and open to after Cody returns them to him.

Obi-Wan respects Cody, the singular drive he and the other clones have, their bravery and optimism in the worst of circumstances. It’s what Obi-Wan feels he should be capable of, and it humbles him that for all of the vaunted powers of the Force, Cody’s hand is the one that never trembles after a battle and Cody’s heart never seems to beg for alcohol to quiet it.

As time passes and Cody reads more of Obi-Wan’s books, their conversations grow longer and longer, sometimes lasting for hours while they await overdue gunships or orders from the Council. Obi-Wan is secretly thrilled to find a kindred spirit in his commander: Cody is happy to discuss things like the finer moral points of Nidai folktales and the background of whatever poet he’s reading at the time, tackling all of it with the same enthusiasm he was bred to bring to warfare.

“You know,” Obi-Wan says early one morning as the two sit alone atop a cliff and look through their binoculars over a dawn-streaked valley below, “I’m running out of datapads for you. The ones I have onboard, I mean.”

Cody grins, darting a look down and keying in coordinates for their scouts ahead, setting places he wants them to check out. “Not possible, as much as you read. You just tired of lending them to me?” he jokes. “What, did I scratch one?”

Obi-Wan smiles back, watching the little white silhouettes work their way across the valley floor. “No. I think they’re cleaner when I get them back than when I give them to you. I’m really running out of them. ”

“‘If I am to fly give me wings made of words and a heart made of ink.’”

Obi-Wan nods approvingly, impressed, lowering his binoculars. “Is that from Lady Vaeh’s Letters of Spring?”

“Her sister, I think.”

The two sit in peaceful, agreeable silence as the scouts report back one at a time, the pastel waves of clouds brightening until the sun of this obscure world breaks through in a glimmer of yellow. Obi-Wan feels the Force drifting around him, whispering something to him he can barely hear, but it feels warm and soothing and like Cody.

_Cody._

_Something about Cody._

_I think… I think Cody may be attracted to me._

Obi-Wan has meditated all his life, and in this quiet moment, this subtle alignment of their souls as Cody sits next to him, it is easy for him to watch the thought drift past without his face betraying the surprise it brings.

_Me? Why me?_

Obi-Wan has no answer for this.

_Am I attracted to him as well?_

He does for this question, the answer there as soon as he asks it.

_I… I am._

Now Obi-Wan at last understands that faint, beautiful blossom of warmth in his soul that has soothed him in the last few months, keeping away the worst of the shakes after a battle and the urge to find a strong drink to treat them.

Obi-Wan turns his gaze inward and finds a garden of gentle fondness and sharp attraction blooming in the dark as he looks over at Cody and really sees him for the first time: relaxed, smiling, strong jaw and warm eyes and a quick wit that rivals Obi-Wan’s own when they are alone.

“Obi-Wan?” Cody asks, glancing up from his binoculars. “Is something wrong?”

“No, not at all.” He shakes his head and looks back out over the valley, a soft smile on his face and the rays of the morning sun bright in his hair.

 

* * *

 

There is a problem sitting squarely between them that both CC-2224 and Jedi Master Kenobi are aware of, and that is the rules against fraternization, listed in the numbered subsections of a long, clinical list for the clones and spoken in a few simple lines by the monk warrior’s Order.

Because of this, in the light of day with the weight of a helmet or a saber a heavy reminder of such things, there is nothing spoken about their growing attraction, no hint given from one to the other.

It takes the dark and another late night in another wilderness far from home before anything is done about it, the two hidden from the camp just a short hike away by trees and the sound of thunder rolling through the woods. Their kisses taste of rain and evergreen, their only words quiet gasps lost in the wind sighing through branches until Skywalker coms Obi-Wan with an emergency mission and they hurry back, laughing with both embarrassment and giddiness as the rain soaks their clothes and beads in their hair.

Obi-Wan catches Cody’s eye as they rush back, a happy, knowing grin on his face that promises this will not be the last time. Cody nods and gives a smile and a mock salute to show he agrees, slowing down to let Obi-Wan jog ahead of him back into the lights of the camp. This allows him to step out alone a minute later and avoid any strange looks from Skywalker, whose tall silhouette is waiting by their small transport on the other side of the makeshift landing field.

 _Take care of him, Skywalker_ , Cody thinks, half-dazed and completely thrilled, a heady warmth drifting through him as he watches the ship blast off in a crown of icy blue fire into the rainy night, lightning crackling all around.

 

* * *

 

 _I shouldn’t do this_ , Obi-Wan thinks after that first kiss. _I know I shouldn’t do this._

All through the mission with Anakin, a quick and successful rescue of some captured Republic leaders, Obi-Wan thinks this to himself. He repeats it, like a mantra. _It’s fraternization. It’s wrong. It could grow into attachment._

 _You’re already emotionally attached to your Padawan. Why not add one more?_ the Negotiator side of him bargains. _Why does Anakin get to have a ‘secret’ affair and you don’t? Why does he get to be human and you don’t?_

 _He is young,_ the General answers. _And when the war is over I will tell him to leave the Order, to go be happy with her. I am older. I should know better. I do know better._

 _Yes_ , Obi-Wan tells himself, deciding as he hacks through a row of droids with such bitter, angry viciousness even Anakin gives a worried glance over. _I am a Jedi, and a General. I won’t do this. I shouldn’t do this._

This mantra lasts twenty-seven more days, Cody’s own apparent hesitation after Anakin and Obi-Wan’s return forcing the two to quietly circle each other. The air hangs heavy between them with a new, luscious tension, building slowly and steadily like a distant wave coming toward shore.

On Day Twenty-Six of Obi-Wan’s attempt to remain the perfect Jedi, the 212th and 501st fully and completely liberate a planet long blockaded by the Separatists. In the capital city, a swirl of white marble and waterfalls, a wild celebration ensues, heady liquor flowing and the clones carried around like royalty on the locals’ backs.

Obi-Wan and Cody watch and laugh from one of the wide, sweeping balconies that run from building to building as Anakin is carried off below, half-drunk and proudly proclaiming himself the best damn pilot in the entire galaxy to the approving cheers of Rex, a dozen clones, and what seems like half of the local populace.

“Well, there he goes,” Obi-Wan grins, holding up his drink as Anakin waves up at them. “Always on the move.”

“Why should he have all the fun?” Cody whispers, leaning on the railing next to him as he finishes off his own drink, giving him that same playful smirk Obi-Wan gave him in the rain almost a month ago.

Obi-Wan realizes he has no real answer for this.

 

* * *

 

Day Twenty-Seven begins, as all days do, in the darkest hours of the night.

There is no chrono in the room Obi-Wan and Cody find themselves in. There is no light either. There is only the darkness that feels safe, that feels like home almost as much as the touch of the other.

 _I shouldn’t do this_ , Obi-Wan thinks one last time, and then all thought and reason and doubt are driven out in the glorious, maddening touch of Cody’s mouth on his, of his hands inside his robes, running down his chest and stomach, pulling him closer.

No one will come looking for orders or to check on them in this nondescript room among hundreds the locals have set aside for the victorious army. For one night they are just two souls twined in shadow, their gasps and moans lost in the drunken singing of the crowds outside, their hearts pounding together like the low boom of fireworks that rattle the building all night.

 

* * *

 

More time passes, more battles, more blood and loss and death. And yet Cody has hope for the future once again. He and Obi-Wan, his beautiful, deadly general, are lovers now, just as much as Skywalker and his senator, just as necessarily hidden.

Cody hates the days that pass with only quiet touches as they brush against each other passing by or traded, furtive smiles stilled immediately by a door opening. But he has hope.

He hasn’t told Obi-Wan, but he’s solved the mystery of the future, of what he will do when the war is over.

_I don’t care what I do when the war’s over. Or where I live. I don’t care what kind of house I have._

_I just care who’s in it._

_And I’d like that to be you, Obi-Wan._

Closing his eyes, Cody turns the now thread-worn remnant of the painting in his hands over and over again in his bunk, telling himself how easy it is and not believing himself at all.

_All I have to do is say it to him. That’s it. And see what he says. That’s it. I just have to say it. And hope he says yes._

_I’ll tell him. It’s easy._

_Tomorrow. I’ll do it tomorrow._

But he doesn’t. Cody, who faces death on the battlefield nearly every day and has the scars to prove it, finds himself afraid. And so he keeps pushing it back, again and again.

A dozen tomorrows and then a hundred pass, and then suddenly Cody is standing in the middle of a furious battle, blaster bolts singing all around and the throaty buzz of gunships overhead amplified by the walls of the massive sunken hole that surrounds them.

Cody gives Obi-Wan his dropped saber back, not for the first time, and sends a silent prayer for safety after him as the Jedi rides off atop this planet’s answer to a lizard, the man just as brave as any of his brothers.

And then Cody’s com buzzes on a channel he’s never used before.

The blue ghost that rises up in front of him is small and pale against the bright daylight, but his words are hypnotic. The din of the fight falls away, leaving only the hissed words that scratch along Cody’s soul like claws.

“Commander Cody. The time has come. Execute Order 66.”

“Yes, my lord,” he replies automatically, stunned as he looks off along the curving path Obi-Wan has ridden off toward, and tries to process what he has just been told, the words that are smoldering into view in his mind as they sing along his synaptic nerves.

Order 66.

Two parts stand out, ugly and bright. _Jedi officers. Commanders will remove those officers by lethal force. Jedi officers._

Time slows to an impossible crawl as he turns toward his men, tucking the com back into his pouch against the thickness of the folded-up square of the painting he always keeps there. In his mind he sees two images at the same time: a wall of hard numbers, the facts, the urge to fulfill orders, but he also sees Obi-Wan falling like a leaf from that first poem he recited to Cody so long ago, his body red with the autumn color of blood.

The first image speaks to a cold, lifeless implant chip already damaged in a long-ago concussion on a distant canyon floor. The second speaks to his heart, made strong and wild by beautiful words and the fragile love he shares with Obi-Wan.

The chip and the heart battle, airless and sterile logic against the passionate man Cody has grown to be with Obi-Wan at his side.

And amid a searing, lingering pain in his head that takes Cody’s breath away and will remain for days, the heart finally wins.

_I can’t kill him. I can’t let them kill him._

His mind races.

And the child of Kamino, of order and rationality, makes a desperate gamble.

_I have to give the order to shoot. If nothing happens in the next few minutes they’ll remove me from command and do it anyway._

_Please, please let this work._

Cody turns to a group of artillery men that have jogged up to await orders, their massive weapons grinding around into place behind them. He snaps a finger over to point at a brother named Jump. “Get in that cannon behind you. Guts, you’re his spotter. Target the Jedi.”

They obey, just as they should, just as he would have before Obi-Wan. It chills Cody as he watches them clamber into position on the gun with no questions at all about this new assignment to kill the man so many of them have died protecting these last few years.

 _Jump is the worst shooter in his class with thirty-two percent accuracy,_ his battle memory whispers _, and Guts always sights low._

_With that and the gun-- a C6-class 2794, two-man, mounted, probably drained to half a charge at this point in the fight-- they’ll miss._

_They have to miss._

Cody looks up, the terror and agony on his face hidden by his helmet, and begs the gods the Telladorians wrote so many beautiful poems about and the Force Obi-Wan has talked about and anything and anyone else who might listen to a simple clone from Kamino. _Please spare him._

_I love him._

He glances back at the gunners, waving his arm, not daring to let his fear into his voice. “Blast him.”

No one sees him close his eyes for the shot itself, unable to watch as the men fire. When he opens them again, he sees Obi-Wan falling along with his mount down, down, into the waters of the sinkhole bottom, Cody’s heart plummeting with them. Even with his helmet’s automatic magnification he can’t tell if the movement he sees is Obi-Wan flailing or the wind pushing a limp body.

“Get me a speeder bike,” he shouts. “Now! I have to personally confirm any Jedi officer deaths,” he says to his next-in-command, a blond brother by the name of Ion. “You are in command until I get back.”

“Sir,” Ion salutes as Cody turns and slings himself over the bike pulling up, the soldier who brought it hopping off. They all salute again as he darts off along the paths, dodging flak and fire, his soul frozen in bitter, painful shards of ice as he listens to reports from other battalions and legions, proud reports of successful eliminations of Jedi everywhere.

 _Please. Please. Please,_ is all he can think as he spirals downward, through catacomb-like passages and tunnels, down toward the dim shadows and cool murk of the bottom of the rounded canyon, finally slapping his helmet com off when he can’t stand to listen to any more of it.

When he reaches the bottom, the battle far above like a bad dream, he finds Obi-Wan dragging himself out of the water, dazed and pale, knuckles white around his saber.

 _He’s alive!_ “Obi-Wan!” Relief hits Cody so hard he’s left breathless and speechless as he jumps off the bike and rushes over to pull Obi-Wan the rest of the way out of the water.

“What… what happened?” he rasps as Cody drags him back into the shadows of the passages scattered about this ground level, out of view of anyone with a scope watching overhead.

“Trust me. You have to trust me,” Cody whispers as he steps back out into the open air and view from above. He draws his blaster. “Stay still.”

Aiming past a stunned Obi-Wan into the cave, he fires off two shots in rapid succession, knowing it will look like an execution to anyone above. _We have at least twenty minutes before I’m overdue getting back. That’s enough time. Please let it be enough time._

“What is going on?” Obi-Wan asks, coughing, as Cody comes and kneels in front of him, taking his face in his hands, gloves warm and soft on Obi-Wan’s jaw.

“Something big. An order from the Emperor, preprogrammed into us to kill you. To kill all the Jedi.” Cody tries not to think about the implications of this, of the horrors that are happening right now all across the galaxy. “Mine didn’t work.”

“Anakin. I have to save Anakin,” Obi-Wan gasps.

“No, Obi-Wan,” Cody says, unwilling to tell him everything he heard on the ride down. “You need to get somewhere safe and hide there for awhile.”

“Anakin... ”

“Can take care of himself,” Cody tells him firmly, helping Obi-Wan up and letting him lean on him as they make their way into the cool darkness of the carved passages.

“Thank you,” Obi-Wan breathes quietly, the pain that begins to pour in from the Force crushing his spirit. “Thank you for saving me. Where… where are we going?”

“Somewhere safe. I... bought a little house on the side awhile back, out on one of the Outer Rim planets, under a different name,” Cody grunts as he half-drags Obi-Wan up the ramp to one of the ships left open by locals fleeing the battle overhead. “I guess I was trying to think of the future. You know, that new life after the war we talked about once.”

“The… the future’s here, isn’t it?” Obi-Wan murmurs, staring out into nothing as he tries desperately to shut his psyche away from the howling gales of the Force stealing through him.

“It is. And you’re going to make it through.”

“I don’t know if I can,” he whispers.

Cody helps him sit down in the copilot chair and leans in close, his brown eyes filling Obi-Wan’s vision. “You can. You will. You are not alone. I will protect you, always.”

Obi-Wan reaches up and weakly runs a hand through Cody’s dark hair, leaning forward to touch his forehead to Cody’s as he remembers all is not lost. _Not all. Not him._ “And I you.”

“Together then?"

“Together. Always together.”

It is the closest to a vow either knows how to say, the clone shying away from the neutral language of orders and commands, the Jedi taught to fear making such promises of the soul from an early age.

But the emotion behind the simple words binds them all the same.

And when Obi-Wan insists on returning to his Temple instead of going into hiding, they go together. Cody is there, hand in Obi-Wan’s, as they watch the horrible recording of Anakin kneeling to Sidious.

He is there when the Jedi Grandmaster Yoda tells Obi-Wan he must end Anakin’s life. Distraught but dutiful, Obi-Wan proposes visiting Padme to try to find out Anakin’s location, but Cody tells him they don’t need to. His knowledge of the com battle codes and a helmet borrowed from one of the 501st battalion corpses littering the Temple floor allow him to decipher Vader’s location within the hour, a small and hellish planet called Mustafar.

They leave Padme safe and unaware in her apartments on Coruscant.

When they arrive on Mustafar, Vader is too busy stalking around Obi-Wan and raging at him incoherently to see the second man creep down the ship ramp. Cody shoots Vader squarely in the back with a blaster pistol lowered to stun, as neatly as in his old target practice sessions back on Kamino.

Together, Cody and Obi-Wan carry Vader back to Padme and his children, born safe and healthy to a loving mother that will live for many more years. They watch warily, saber and blaster drawn, as Anakin wakes and realizes the true horror of what Vader’s done.

They flee Coruscant with the Skywalkers to join the Rebellion. Side-by-side, battle after battle, Cody and Obi-Wan fight together, even flanking Anakin as he takes on and slays Sidious himself years later.

Together they watch as the Empire falls with the gasping wheeze of a monstrous old man.

And when everything is done, when all of the honors are given and the rebuilding is finished, Obi-Wan and Cody leave Coruscant.

They slowly become old men, living in their little house on a little beach in peace neither thought they would ever live to see.

Together.

Always.

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first time writing this pairing. Hope you liked it!


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